By Sandra Block From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance A health savings account provides one of the most-effective strategies to save for health care in retirement. Contributions are pretax (or tax-deductible, if your HSA isn’t employer-sponsored), the funds grow tax-deferred, and withdrawals are tax-free for qualified medical expenses. There are no income limits on HSAs, but you…

The federal government has invoked confidentiality which forbids the release of the overhead cost of its “Canada Dental Benefit” program, says a report by the Parliamentary Budget Office (PBO). “The Government has shared its own estimates of administration costs with us,” said the PBO report, submitted to the Commons government operations committee (OGGO), in response…

By Rocky Mengle From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Your life changes in many ways when you get older. But there’s something else that changes as you age that you might not have considered before—your taxes. There are different tax breaks that you can claim when you’re older, and the types of income you’re likely to receive…

By Nellie S. Huang From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance Which investments you hold matters, but so, too, does where you hold them, whether it’s in a tax-advantaged account or a taxable one. The strategy of divvying up your assets into certain types of accounts to lower your tax bill is called asset location. The general advice…

By Sandra Block From Kiplinger’s Personal Finance It’s often said that buying a house is the largest investment most of us will ever make. But if you have a couple of children, the cost of sending them to a four-year college could exceed even that big-ticket item. Three kids—or at least one with Ivy League…

When Brandy Baxter needed to replace her home’s entire heating and air conditioning system several years ago, she asked contractors if they offered deals at certain times of the year. She learned that if she waited until February, the slow season for such work, she could get a lower price. Baxter, a financial coach based…

“Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” Benjamin Franklin wrote in a 1789 letter. The significance between that often-cited quotation? It’s often the first attribution to the adage, “Nothing is certain except for death…